fascinating paleontology

Dino-Era Feathers Found Encased in Amber

2008-03-13T18:52:00.000-07:00

Seven dino-era feathers found perfectly preserved in amber in western France highlight a crucial stage in feather evolution, scientists report..........

Free Republic

The Mummified Dinosaur

2007-12-03T06:13:00.000-08:00

One of the most complete dinosaur mummies ever found is revealing secrets locked away for millions of years, bringing researchers as close as they will ever get to touching a live dino..........

Yahoo News

Dinosaur-Killing Asteroid Discovered

2007-09-06T04:44:00.000-07:00

The asteroid that smacked into Earth and is believed to have wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago may have originated in an enormous collision between two asteroids about 100 million years earlier, researchers argue in a paper to be published tomorrow in the influential journal Nature..........

Science

Will Mammoths and Neanderthals Be Resurrected?

2007-06-27T04:19:00.000-07:00

.........researchers are on the verge of piecing together complete genomes of long-dead species such as Neandertals and mammoths..........

National Geographic News

T-Rex a Slow Giant?

2007-06-07T05:02:00.000-07:00

New research challenges the notion that the dinosaur Tyrannosaurus rex—the predatory “tyrant lizard king”—could turn quickly and chase down fast, agile dinosaurs..........

World Science

T-Rex Molecules Link to Chickens

2007-04-16T03:54:00.000-07:00

In a venture once thought to lie outside the reach of science, researchers have decoded the makeup of molecules from soft tissue of a 68 million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex..........

World Science

New Dinosaur Discovery in Antarctica

2006-12-13T05:08:00.000-08:00

A Bay Area paleontologist who specializes in Antarctic dinosaur discoveries announced Monday morningthat his team had made another spectacular find: the fossilized remains of a nearly complete baby plesiosaur that conjures up visions of the Loch Ness monster.

A massive volcanic eruption in Antarctica likely killed and preserved the long-necked, diamond-finned marine reptile 70 million years ago, said Judd Case, a field researcher for UC Berkeley's Museum of Paleontology and former St. Mary's College dean.

The expedition team knew the discovery was significant, but it wasn't until the fossilized bones had been chiseled out of the permafrost and airlifted to safety by Argentinean Air Force helicopters that the full magnitude of the find became apparent. The animal's skull had eroded away, but the entire articulated skeleton, cartilage and all, was still perfectly preserved in volcanic ash..........

topix.net

Study Suggests Only One Impact Destroyed the Dinosaurs

2006-11-29T04:48:00.000-08:00

The dinosaurs, along with the majority of all other animal species on Earth, went extinct approximately 65 million years ago. Some scientists have said that the impact of a large meteorite in the Yucatan Peninsula, in what is today Mexico, caused the mass extinction, while others argue that there must have been additional meteorite impacts or other stresses around the same time. A new study provides compelling evidence that "one and only one impact" caused the mass extinction, according to a University of Missouri-Columbia researcher..........

SpaceRef.com

Dinosaur Extinction Due to Multiple Causes, Study Suggests

2006-10-27T05:46:00.000-07:00

Growing evidence, paleontologists say, shows that the dinosaurs and their contemporaries were not wiped out by one meteor impact, as is commonly assumed.Rather, multiple impacts, massive volcanism in India and climate changes conspired to finish off the great reptiles, according to Gerta Keller of Princeton University in Princeton, N.J., and colleagues..........

World Science

Giant Extinct Camel Remains Discovered in Syria

2006-10-13T04:28:00.000-07:00

The bones of a huge extinct camel have been discovered in Syria, a joint Swiss-Syrian team announced last week.
The previously unknown species lived about a hundred thousand years ago and was "as big as a giraffe or an elephant," the archaeologists say..........

National Geographic News

Mastodon Extinction Due, in Part, to Tuberculosis?

2006-10-04T04:15:00.000-07:00

Tuberculosis was rampant in North American mastodons during the late Ice Age and may have led to their extinction, researchers say...........

National Geographic News

Huge Production of Dinosaurs in One Week

2006-09-16T09:50:00.000-07:00

One recent week in the Gobi Desert produced 67 dinosaur skeletons for a team of paleontologists from Montana and Mongolia who want to flesh out the developmental biology of dinosaurs.........

Science Daily

Bright Future for Dinosaur Hunting

2006-09-07T03:58:00.000-07:00

The golden age of dinosaur discovery is yet upon us, according to Peter Dodson at the University of Pennsylvania. In a forthcoming issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Dodson revises his groundbreaking 1990 census on the diversity of discoverable dinosaurs upward by 50%, offering a brighter outlook about the number of dinosaurs waiting to be found. His findings also add evidence that dinosaur populations were stable, and not on the decline, in the time shortly before their extinction 65 million years ago..........

Science Daily

Largest Dinosaur in Asia Discovered

2006-08-30T05:44:00.000-07:00

Chinese paleontologists said Tuesday they had found the remains of the largest dinosaur ever to be unearthed in Asia, measuring an estimated 35 meters (116 feet)..........

Political Gateway

Mini-Dinosaurs Discovered

2006-06-08T04:23:00.000-07:00

When unusually small dinosaur fossils were found in a quarry on the northern edge of the Harz Mountains in 1998, it was initially assumed that these were the remains of a group of young dinosaurs. This was a fallacy, as the Bonn palaeontologist, Dr. Martin Sander, recently discovered. The microstructure of the bones, he says, makes it very likely that the animals involved were adults – a scientific sensation: at a maximum estimated weight of one tonne they were only a fiftieth the weight of their closest relatives, the brachiosaurs, and thus by far the smallest of the giant dinosaurs which have ever been found. The study will be published on 8 June in the journal 'Nature'..........

EurekAlert

Giant Dinosaurs Hunted in Packs?

2006-04-20T05:03:00.000-07:00

Giant predatory dinosaurs may have hunted in packs to bring down the biggest plant-eating prey.
The evidence comes from the first detailed analysis of the remains of giant predatory dinosaurs uncovered in Patagonia over a span of five years, starting in 1997. The 100-million-year-old bones come from a previously unknown species closely related to Giganotosaurus, a huge and slightly older creature also unearthed in Argentina (see "The dino-daddy of all meat eaters")..........

NewScientist.com

Largest Carnivorous Dinosaur Discovered

2006-04-19T04:04:00.000-07:00

At a news conference today in the western Patagonian city where the new species was found, paleontologists will unveil what may be one of the largest carnivorous dinosaurs known..........

Science Daily

The Missing Link Fish With Limbs

2006-04-06T04:28:00.000-07:00

Found in the Canadian Arctic, the new fossil boasts leglike fins, scientists say. The creature is being hailed as a crucial missing link between fish and land animals—including the prehistoric ancestors of humans..........

National Geographic News

Dinoaur Fossils Found on Remote South Pacific Island

2006-04-04T04:20:00.000-07:00

"We know now … that dinosaurs were inhabiting really the most isolated regions of the Southern Hemisphere," said Jeffrey Stilwell, a paleontologist at Monash University in Victoria, Australia..........

National Geographic News

Dinosaur With Giant Neck and Air-Filled Bones Discovered

2006-03-23T04:16:00.000-08:00

Scientists say they have found the fossil of a new species of ungainly dinosaur that had special air sacs in some of its bones to help support its massively long neck.
Living more than 100 million years ago in what is now Mongolia, the dinosaur belonged to a group of gentle, plant-munching giants called sauropods, the biggest animals ever to have walked the Earth..........

National Geographic News

Many Dino Fossils Could Have Soft Tissue Inside

2006-02-23T06:50:00.000-08:00

A 2005 paper in the journal Science described what appeared to be flexible blood vessels, cells, and collagen-like bone matrix from fossils of a 70-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex..........

National Geographic News

T-rex Ancestor Discovered

2006-02-09T04:44:00.000-08:00

Researchers say they have uncovered the earliest member of the dinosaur group that went on to include the fearsome Tyrannosaurus rex. It seems to have been a vicious little monster with an elaborate crest over its snout, they report..........

World Science

The Hardy Scorpion

2006-01-27T17:26:00.000-08:00

A scorpion lived for 15 months without food or water inside the plaster mold of a dinosaur fossil, breaking free only when a scientist broke open the mold.

Don DeBlieux, a paleontologist for the Utah Geological Survey, said he was sawing open the plaster mold when the scorpion wriggled from a crack in a sandstone block.

DeBlieux is still chipping away at the 1,000-pound rock to expose the horned skull of an 80-million-year-old plant eater — a species of dinosaur he says is new to science...........

Lubbock Online

Argentina: The Place for Dinosaurs

2006-01-04T14:25:00.000-08:00

Jorge Calvo walks the dusty terrain slowly, eyes downcast, combing the red dirt of Argentina's desert for bones. He does not have to look far.

Calvo spots some gray chips. Bits of dinosaur fossils, the scientist says. Just yards away, massive vertebraes of what may be a new species remain partly excavated. Nearby, the rib of a smaller prehistoric beast protrudes from the rocks.

For now, Calvo leaves them. There are many more dinosaur remains in this part of west-central Argentina than his team can handle. Rarely a day passes that they do not find the teeth, bones or other remains of a dinosaur or other prehistoric animal or plant at Project Dino, their excavation site on the banks of Lake Barreales..........

Miami Herald

Bird-like Dinosaur More Dinosaur Than Bird

2005-12-10T05:35:00.000-08:00

The world's best preserved archaeopteryx fossil has surfaced after many years in a private collection. The exquisite specimen reveals that the bird was even more dinosaur-like than we originally thought..........

New Scientist

Giant Scorpion Footprints

2005-12-01T13:36:00.000-08:00

A geologist working in Scotland has uncovered footprints that he says come from a fearsome water scorpion bigger than a human.........

World Science

Dinosaur Tracks Discovered in Wyoming

2005-10-20T05:24:00.000-07:00

The tracks of a previously unknown, two-legged swimming dinosaur have been identified along the shoreline of an ancient inland sea that covered Wyoming 165 million years ago, according to a University of Colorado at Boulder graduate student..........

ScienceDaily

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Ancient Cretaceous Echosystem Being Uncovered

2005-09-28T04:03:00.000-07:00

Enthusiastic scientists say bones coming out of Utah's Grand Staircase National Monument are rewriting the age of the dinosaurs, when they last lived. The area has become a gold mine for paleontologists, with the latest discovery airlifted from its grave this week..........

Read the Story

Mammoth Bones in California

2005-09-02T08:13:00.000-07:00

Scientists disinterred more bits and pieces of San Jose's Pleistocene mammoth Thursday and packed them up in preparation for their trip to Berkeley, where they will join the rest of the animal for study.
Several bleached and broken ribs -- the kind of thing you might find in the trash at Henry's Hi-Life 12,000 years ago -- were discovered by a team of University of California-Berkeley paleontologists earlier this month at the site on the edge of the Guadalupe River.
In July, while walking with his dog, San Jose environmentalist Roger Castillo first found the bones in a canal on Santa Clara Valley Water District property. Further study by the Berkeley team yielded pieces of the animal's thigh, toes, pelvis, tusks, a possible vertebra and one or two other mystery bones.
They are thought to belong to an ancient and long-extinct Columbian mammoth, an elephant-like creature that roamed the valley tens of thousands of years ago..........

Mercury News

Dinosaur Find in Pacific Northwest

2005-08-08T05:19:00.000-07:00

Eyes pinned to the ground, fossil hunters Greg Kovalchuk and Mike Kelly were searching Central Oregon's dusty crevices for mollusk fossils late last summer when Kelly saw it.

On a spot on Bureau of Land Management land near Prineville was a jagged rock marked with a white triangle. Kelly instantly knew it was a tooth. Nearby, he found a black and bone-colored cone-shaped tooth with striations and enamel.

Twenty feet away on a slope, Kovalchuk spotted a piece of jawbone sticking out of the dirt.

The earth was spilling 100 million-year-old secrets from a time when dinosaurs prowled on land and reptiles slithered in and out of oceans.

The self-trained paleontologists found what is believed to be the first remains of a marine reptile called the plesiosaur that has been found in the Pacific Northwest.

It is also thought to be only the third vertebrate fossil uncovered in the area so far from a rock formation that dates back to the Cretaceous period, the last of the three periods of the Dinosaur Age..........

Read the Rest: from The Bulletin

Dinosaur Embryo Study Breaks New Ground

2005-07-29T04:18:00.000-07:00

Newly studied embryos of a long-necked, plant-eating dinosaur are the earliest known for any terrestrial vertebrate, or backboned animal, researchers say. The scientists claim the discovery yields new clues to how primitive dinosaurs evolved into the largest animals ever to walk on Earth.
It also provides a rare glimpse into the life of the Massospondylus, an early dinosaur that grew to five metres (more than five yards) and was fairly common in South Africa, they said.

The 190 million year-old embryos are from the beginning of the Jurassic Period, the middle of an epoch known as the age of dinosaurs.

World Science Daily

Digging Those Dinosaurs

2005-07-22T04:51:00.000-07:00

Six-year-old Dana Wille buzzes with excitement as she watches her father carefully brush dirt away from a dull black object embedded in the ground.
Darker than the crumbly gray rock around it, it's smooth and hard and shaped like a dog bone. Only it's bigger. A lot bigger. Indeed, as the father-daughter team slowly dust away more debris, it becomes clear that it is a femur, a leg bone, from one of the largest animals ever to roam Earth — the 80-foot-long, plant-eating apatosaurus..........

USA Today

Researchers Discover Half-Billion Year-Old Fossils

2005-07-12T12:52:00.000-07:00

Scientists interested in ancient life have a wealth of fossils and impressions frozen in rocks that they can study from as far back as 540 million years ago – when animals with shells and bones began to become plentiful. But evidence of complex life older than 540 million years is scant and difficult to study. Now, a research team from Virginia Tech in the United States and Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology in China has discovered uniquely well-preserved fossils form from 550 million year old rocks of the Ediacaran Period..........Read More

Innovations Report, July 12, 2005

A Dinosaur Track in Alaska

2005-07-08T06:04:00.000-07:00

A track from a three-toed dinosaur thought to be about 70 million years old was discovered in Denali National Park by a college student. The track from a theropod, a meat-eater, is the first dinosaur evidence found in the park, and caused its first paleontology closure for the area immediately around the track. It was found near the park road 35 miles from the park entrance.........Read More

Dan Joling The Associated Press July 6, 2005

An Ancient Reptile Discovered in Utah

2005-07-02T05:48:00.000-07:00

Dinosaurs may have ruled the land 90 million years ago, but plesiosaurs ruled the sea. The giant marine reptiles were the top predators in the shallow interior seaway that at one time stretched from Utah to Nebraska, from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic. This week paleontologists are excavating a plesiosaur skeleton in Utah, just north of Lake Powell. As Arizona Public Radio's Daniel Kraker reports, they believe itÂs a species never before found in the region........ KNAU/NPR Newsroom Daniel Kraker June 30, 2005 Read More

T-Rex Like a Big Bird

2005-06-03T05:16:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Tissue found inside a nearly 70 million year old Tyrannosaurus rex femur strengthens the theory that today's birds are direct descendants from the dinosaurs, according to a study in the journal Science..........

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The First Sauropod Skulls

2005-06-02T05:48:00.000-07:00

SALT LAKE CITY -- The first known North American skulls of Cretaceous era sauropods -- big dinosaurs with little heads -- have been uncovered in recent years by Brigham Young University and Dinosaur National Monument researchers. About a dozen sauropod skulls are known from the earlier Jurassic era, but these are the first in North America for the Cretaceous, the final 80 million years of the dinosaur period..........

Daily Herald, May 31, 2005 Read More

New Dinosaur Exhibit in Texas Offers a Unique Experience

2005-05-28T05:49:00.000-07:00

Read More about an exciting new interactive dinosaur exhibit.

A Sleeping Dinosaur

2005-05-24T08:13:00.000-07:00

The first fossil of a sleeping non-avian dinosaur has been described by a pair of American Museum of Natural History paleontologists. The small bird-like dinosaur is preserved in a remarkable life-like pose, with its head tucked between its forearm and trunk with its tail encircling its body. The pose matches the typical sleeping or resting posture found in living birds and thereby supports the already established evolutionary connection between extinct dinosaurs and modern birds (which are living dinosaurs) and the occurrence of bird-like features in early dinosaurian evolution. It also supports the hypothesis that non-avian dinosaurs, like the modern birds that evolved after them, were warm-blooded..........

ScienceDaily, May 23, 2005

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Pleistocene Park

2005-05-18T04:59:00.000-07:00

During the last ice age northeastern Siberia remained a grassy refuge for scores of animals, including bison and woolly mammoths. Then, about 10,000 years ago, this vast ecosystem disappeared as the Ice Age ended.
Now, though, the Ice Age landscape is on its way back, with a little help from the Russian scientists who have established "Pleistocene Park."
The scientists hope to uncover what killed off the woolly mammoth and other Ice Age animals. To do so, they're restoring the prehistoric ecosystem once found in what is now the remote Sakha region of eastern Russia..........
Read More

-- Stefan Lovgrenfor, National Geographic News, May 17, 2005

60,000-Year-Old Mammoth Bones Uncovered in Russia

2005-05-16T08:54:00.000-07:00

A group of workers was surprised to see a large bone in the excavator bucket

Specialists spend many months, looking for remnants of ancient animals that used to inhabit planet Earth. Scientists uncover bones of prehistoric animals, meticulously removing the ground from them. Paleontologists rejoice even if they find just several fragments of an animal carcass. However, common people can make such discoveries as well, albeit incidentally. Workers that were digging a pit in the ground not far from the village of Vlasikha in the Altay region of Russia, discovered a perfectly preserved skeleton of a mammoth. The workers did not treat their finding carefully and uncovered the bones with an excavator.........

Pravda, May 16, 2005

Amateur Fossil Hunters Discover New Flat-Headed Dinosaur

2005-05-08T12:49:00.000-07:00

The discovery of a new species of dinosaur, which made news from Bangkok to Sydney this week, began two years ago with three amateur dinosaur hunters from Sioux City.

The lawyer, doctor and veterinarian were on one of their regular fossil hunts in May 2003 when the lawyer spotted something curious in the western South Dakota dirt......

New Dinosaur Discovery Shows Changes in Diet

2005-05-06T12:29:00.000-07:00

First noticed by a black market fossil dealer, a new species found in a Utah boneyard may be a missing link in dinosaurs' trend toward vegetarianism. The 125-million-year-old fossils, from the dinosaur Falcarius utahensis, were discovered in a graveyard of hundreds, if not thousands, of individuals. Though it may have eaten meat, Falcarius's teeth and guts show the first signs of the species's change toward a leafy, green diet..........

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